By Leonard Ng

A Field Guide to Surreal Botany
Janet Chui and Jason Erik Lundberg (eds.)
Two Cranes Press (2008) / 76 pages / SGD14

At first glance it seems to be a fairly formulaic concept: solicit a bunch of botanical articles on imaginary plants, sort those articles by geographical region, add some watercolour illustrations, and there you go—a pretty little postmodern book. The whole thing, frankly, sounds like the sort of too-clever idea which would work much better as an intellectual exercise than a completed work. It is, therefore, rather a surprise that A Field Guide to Surreal Botany succeeds at all.

Yet succeed it does, and more than that: A Field Guide to Surreal Botany is a delight from start to finish. Put out by Singapore-based Two Cranes Press and edited by publishers Janet Chui and Jason Erik Lundberg, the book is a slim volume of some 70-odd pages, containing descriptions of 48 surreal plants sorted into five geographical categories. Each entry—written with tongue firmly in cheek—is illustrated with watercolour paintings by Chui, and the book is printed on faux-weathered paper. The overall effect is that of a naturalist's guidebook from the 19th century; the thoughtful inclusion of a blank page at the back for field notes and a ruled back cover (possibly for measuring specimens) completes that impression. The botanical entries are attentively written and the illustrations are lovely; the book is just short enough to not become tedious, and just long enough to feel substantial. If that was all there were to this book it would have been quite sufficient. Like most guidebooks of this type, there is no fixed order to the entries; it is up to the reader to decide on the sequence in which he or she wishes to read them, or indeed if he wishes to read them at all. A specialist in surreal European species might, after all, take only a cursory interest in the section on the Americas. And so on. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than wandering in these realms of botanical fantasy.

It is possible, however, to read more into these pages. The first and most obvious aspect of them is that, for all the book's simulation of a document from the past, one cannot get away from the fact that it is printed on decidedly modern acid-free paper. The weathered age spots call attention to their own artificiality by virtue of the very material they are printed on: acid-free paper does not, after all, spot and yellow in the manner of older wood-pulp papers. This book is indeed very much a document of a more contemporary time: the article on the Twilight Luon-Sibir (Russica spectrata) makes reference to a 2006 botanical expedition, and the Esemtep is a plant which is, in fact, part computer—a cyber-botanical organism. This collision between simulated past and simulated present is symbolic of the aporias which form the conceptual core of the work: a place where science fiction and fictional science blend into each other, and where reality and imagination call each other into question.

This book has pretences to nonfiction (though a disclaimer in front does warn that these specimens are not to be construed as real). It is essentially an exercise in the "scientific" exploration of imaginary terrain, challenging us to accept the "surreal" plants discovered and described as somehow being part of what we think of as reality—much as we accept the details of most scientific reports as fact, based on trust. The specimens discussed here are no less fantastic, in their way, than some of those described—and accepted as real—in Pliny's Naturalis Historia. It is possible, therefore, to read this book as an experiment which questions the very concept of fictionality itself, an inquiry into the fuzzy boundaries which divide fact from fiction.

As for me, I would rather enjoy this book as a simple work of humour, a small volume which, through its playful approach to reality, serves the simple (and noble) purpose of providing readers with a little intellectual amusement. In harking back to an earlier age of discovery, A Field Guide to Surreal Botany helps to bring a little of that atmosphere of wonder and curiosity into our own era of hyperreality. By eschewing narrative in favour of a more multi-vocal approach, what we find is a collective voice earnestly seeking the new in our own endlessly recycled, postmodern world. Under the unifying hands of the editors/illustrator, we encounter a collective consciousness pushing against the walls of fantasy to find some way forward; and the blank page for field notes at the end serves as an invitation for the reader himself to move from the position of consumer to that of creator, to embark on his or her own voyage of discovery. And that, surely—at any time, in any age—is a worthwhile endeavour.

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